1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus, a method for controlling a print job, and a computer program and, in particular, to a printing apparatus, a method for controlling a print job, and a computer program suitable for canceling the execution of a print job.
2. Description of the Related Art
A variety of techniques for canceling a print job submitted to a printer have been developed (refer to, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-366317).
In these techniques, upon receiving a job cancel request from an application, it is determined whether the job to be canceled is registered with a job queue of a printer. If the job to be canceled is not registered with the job queue of the printer, the schedule for deleting the job is registered in a management table of a printing system. Thereafter, upon receiving a job generation event from the printer, the printing system determines whether a job contained in the event is the same as the job in the deletion schedule. If the jobs are the same, the job is immediately deleted.
In recent years, in order to facilitate enterprise activities, many enterprises have employed enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. ERP systems are information systems for assisting control of business activities, such as sales, delivery, billing, manufacturing, inventory management, and human resource management. An example of the ERP package is SAP R/3 available from SAP AG, Germany.
In addition, recently, the complexity of printing systems has been increased, and the printing systems have been converted from closed systems to open systems. Accordingly, in order to provide users with value-added printing features, such as overlay printing and print job control, ERP systems send print data to a variety of printing systems. As used herein, the term “overlay printing” refers to printing in which print data are printed in a form so as to be a single printout.
Accordingly, output management systems have been developed that process print data output from an ERP system, send the print data to a printing system, and return the printing state of the printing system and the printing result to the ERP system. Examples of such output management systems include “imageWARE Enterprise Gateway” available from CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA.
However, ERP systems send print data via a plurality of systems, including open systems. Therefore, in the above-described existing techniques, the printing result may not be returned to users of the ERP systems, or a print cancellation request may not be sent from the users to a printing system, depending on the interface between the systems.
In addition, in the case of a system including an output management system that submits print jobs to a plurality of print server systems, one print instruction triggers printing operations performed by a plurality of printers. Accordingly, a user cannot know the route of the print instruction that the user inputs in a plurality of systems. Therefore, when the user attempts to cancel the print instruction, the user cannot cancel a printing operation performed by a specific one of the printers without operating the printer, although the user can cancel all of the printing operations performed by the printers. More specifically, in order to cancel a printing operation, a user needs to stand by in front of the printer until the printer receives the sent print job. After the printer receives the sent print job, the user needs to delete the print job via a console panel of the printer. In some cases where transmission of the print job is delayed, the user needs to wait for arrival of the print job in front of the printer for a long time.